Monday, October 01, 2012

Pack In Maps...The Final Frontier

Got this from a Facebook post (the Choose Your Own Adventure fan page, if you must know :) where one of the comments from someone I don't know was, 'Someday, that will be a lot of adventures...'

Man, how right he is! This thing looks like a world map from one of the coolest sci-fi video games ever!!!

It's the kind of thing that used to ship with the great Ultima and Infocom games; the kind of pack in map (sometimes actual cloth!!! :) that you used to stare at obsessively after your parents took you out to dinner after buying you the game; often times the packs in like the map- along with the super cool and detailed instruction manuals (R.I.P.)- were all that kept you from busting out of your skin with desire and anticipation to just be home and playing the damn game already! :)

2 comments:

I know exactly what you mean, I remember the early days of gaming when I'd walk into a store with my parents and I'd make a beeline to the game counter and just stare at the boxes for a long time. Taking my time and reading every detail on the box, secretly wanting everything but making the hard decision on which one I'd try to coax them into getting me eventually.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to miss how great instruction booklets were back in those days. :( It's become sad how little passes for an instruction booklet these days. You're lucky to get four or five pages of information and most of that covers basic operation of your system of choice. I miss the days of full color manuals that you could read during those family trips while waiting to get home from the store or even just for the joy of learning more about the world of the journey you were going to become a part of. You could feel the heart and the soul that went into crafting the worlds back then, the little details of the storylines and the tips that they threw in, even those pages for people that wanted to write down codes or information about the game in the booklet. But it seems that time may be past. I guess that makes me a relic in the gaming industry and only at exactly a quarter of a century old.

As to the map, I'm sure sci-fi writers of old would be ashamed how little progress we've actually made towards conquering the unknown reaches of space. I wonder if we'll feel the same in our lifetimes when intergalactic exploration only evolves so far as to put another rover on a slightly farther planet. I do wish we reach a point where we can go exploring, I think everyone who has ever looked up into the sky at night holds that primal wish, I just personally doubt we'd ever make it, unless some major event takes place. But that's why science fiction is so great, it can take us past our own limitations as a species and lets us explore these places (though imaginative) in our minds and gives us hope that one day we will be able to break those limitations and rise into the stars themselves.

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